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Wednesday, December 11, 2013

Share Your Christmas With Tohoku, Japan!

Jacinta Hin, Jeffrey Jousan, and the others at "Share Your Christmas With Tohoku, Japan" personify good will, good cheer, generosity, and love — everything the spirit of Christmas is supposed to be about. This will be their third "Share Your Christmas" series of gift giving (December to February) to people in Tohoku, of all ages, who have been affected by the natural disasters and the ongoing nuclear meltdowns.

Their first delivery will be in Fukushima at Esperi, a "farmer's market set up by local farmers trying to overcome the 80 percent drop in vegetable sales since Fukushima Daiichi exploded. It will be an evening of Christmas music, cakes and hopefully many wonderful presents! This is our first pre-Christmas delivery so we can use everyone's support. Please send presents as soon as you can. There will be children, parents and grandparents."

Share Your Christmas collects presents and delivers them on your behalf to someone in Tohoku, Japan, affected by the Earthquake, Tsunami and Nuclear Disaster of March 11, 2011, and still living in difficult circumstances. We are collecting gifts from now until the end of January. We are especially looking for gifts for our first delivery on December 17. Scroll down for details on how to send us a gift.

To unconditionally share a gift is a small thing in many ways, but for the people of Tohoku it means so much. Connection. Comfort. Love. Someone somewhere cares, is thinking about them, if offering a small piece of their heart from somewhere far away.

This will our third year to bring Christmas joy and warmth to the people of Tohoku. We collect gifts from now until end of January. Our first delivery is December 17, to an organic farmers community in Fukushima. We plan to visit several more places in Tohoku during the first months of 2014. We distribute presents at Christmas parties we organize.

Hundreds of thousands of people are still living in "Temporary" housing with permanent housing a distant dream and making ends meet is an uphill battle. Many older people have resigned themselves to dying in their temporary residences. The people of Fukushima still live with the fear of the long term effects of radiation and the immediate danger of another accident at the crippled Fukushima Daiichi power plant. Every year, fewer and fewer people visit the region and residents move away. People feel that they have been forgotten.

This is why we are going back again this year (and for many years to come) to Share Your Christmas! Please help us bring some warmth to the hearts of the people of Tohoku.

Please wrap the gift in clear wrapping with a bow and card attached. You can write a message, your name and even contact information if you would like the recipient to contact you. You can even include your picture if you like.

We also accept donations in place of presents. We use them to buy party supplies, buy extra presents, purchase needed supplies and cover transportation costs.

For more details on Share Your Christmas, reports on past deliveries and instructions for sending a gift or making a donation, please visit:

We found these guys as the sun was going down over Ishinomaki city. They are on top of the foundation of a building that was washed away. It's actually in front of the Manga Museum. It was early July when came across them and the sounds of reggae music (an Ishinomaki original song about never giving up). It was the first time after 3.11 that a felt a sense of hope. When I was there again on 11.11 the stone "Kabigon" was still there. (Jeffrey Jousan) — at Ishinomaki.